<http://www.theguardian.com/global/2015/jul/19/beach-greece-germany-imf-holidays>
The beach is a melting pot -- the perfect place to examine what has
shattered our confidence in Europe
Beaches work because everyone understands the rules, and the Greeks are
being kicked off the sand for flouting them
They are coming: flooding airport lounges with tattoos and leggings,
battered straw hats and extended families. On arrival, in Magaluf or
Mytilene, they will mix with streams of holidaymakers from a place called
Europe.
On the beach, they will mix again. Sixth-form girls from Surrey will
hobnob with Corsican fisher-boys.
All summer, the citizens of Europe will flock to the beaches of its
distressed south. They will do so at a time of unprecedented uncertainty
about the European project, still reeling from the powerplay that saw
Greece forced to surrender parliamentary power over economic policy.
And the beach is a perfect place to examine the idea of Europe, and to
work out what has shattered our confidence in it.
On a beach there are always local businesses with a rent-seeking monopoly:
on the bar, the ice-cream van, the pedalos, the umbrellas. This gives them
the power to charge higher-than-normal prices and act as de facto law
enforcement. But there are always interlopers: hippy sellers of home-made
jewellery, a farmer with a donkey load of watermelon, yoga teachers
conducting early morning class, the informal nudist area.
Beaches work because everyone understands the rules are a combination of
formal and informal; that the rule-breakers are usually virtuous; and that
nothing anybody does should get in the way of the sheer human enjoyment of
snoozing, eating crisps and people watching.
In this, the beach is the perfect metaphor for the way Europe was supposed
to work. The powerful, solvent nations set the rules and profited from
their economic advantage; others flouted the rules but in a virtuous way --
they overspent but their living standards rose; the outcome was -- it
seemed -- humane and sustainable.
Once it got out of hand, the response of the powerful nations was to
enforce the rules harshly. Germany and its allies even tried --
metaphorically -- to throw Greece off the beach. As a result, the
atmosphere is sour. It feels like Playa del Euro is a resort where
financial logic comes first, human values second.
So what do we do? I think we have to start with quiet, human values
expressed in sundown conversations.
There is big, rhetorical hostility to the Greek bailout deal across
southern Europe -- with the phrase #BoycottGermany trending in the days
after it was signed. But I doubt there will be the slightest aggro. Sure,
we'll go for a dip with national stereotypes reinforced -- but experience
dictates these, especially among the young, do not survive first contact
with a well-defined bicep or a leopard-skin bikini.
The globalisation of business life, the cheapening of short-haul travel,
university exchange programmes...all these things have chipped away at the
tribal hostility that used to exist in the package holiday resorts of the
mid-1970s.
The Europe we've built from the grassroots up is the greatest insurance
policy against a descent into national rivalries and nation-centred
economic policy. For the pig-and-potato Europeans of the north, the annual
pilgrimage to the world of figs, olives and goat's cheese has become a
cultural ritual that defines who we are as Europeans.
Yet the risk is there. No tourist in their right mind would wander the
bars and cafes of Plaka, the Athens pleasure district, shouting that the
shops should open on days stipulated by the IMF; vodka be served only in
the official measures; and that the already pitiful wages are too high.
Yet that, effectively, is what northern Europe just did.
The memorandum forces Greece to repeal bans on Sunday trading, repeal laws
that ensure you can get fresh bread on every street corner, and open up
the system of family pharmacies, whose owners give informal credit and
advice, to takeover by global corporations.
The most dangerous thing about the sudden takeover of Greece by its
creditors is that they do not know what they want. Their actions indicate
they want southern Europe to become more like the north -- more prudent,
and with all rules enforced. But there is scant understanding of the
existential threat to Europe's balance this entails.
Everybody knows the Greeks threw out the Turks. How many people behind the
cameras stationed outside the Greek parliament know the building was a
Bavarian palace, stormed in 1843 by a crowd demanding a constitution?
Southern Europe's fecklessness, informality, low-level corruption and
disrespect for rules is not some ill-advised recent life choice. It is
built into the specific form of capitalism that developed over the past
200 years. Expat elites in Greece have been porting their wealth offshore
since the Phoenicians.
The deal forced on Greece -- whether it lasts or not -- is testament to the
economic hubris driving northern Europe in its dealings with the south.
As I head for the beach, a cove in the Ionian Sea seasonally populated by
Italians, Dutch and the occasional party from an oligarchic yacht, I'm
determined to start a polyglot conversation, using sign language if
necessary, and lubricated by mastiha, about how much economic hubris the
people on the beach can take. Because, as everyone in the sullen,
fractious and depressed polity that is Greece understands: after the beach
comes autumn. And it could be a hot one.
Paul Mason is economics editor of Channel 4 News. Follow him {AT} paulmasonnews
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